FOR more than 30 years, Opera della Luna founder and director Jeff Clarke has wanted to stage Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, the opera (or is it a musical) version of Voltaire’s classic, first published in 1759.

He always thought that the tiny Harold Peto cloister at Iford, where he has launched so many productions, was too small for the 14-strong cast and the sweeping story. But it did seem like a finale possibility …

So 2018 audiences have six opportunities to see this tragi-comic phil­o­sophical satire which is as rele­vant now as in Voltaire’s day. Bernstein’s score (first published as an opera in 1956, with a new libretto in 1973 and a final revised operetta version in 1989), includes show-stopping numbers that propel the frankly barmy story to its conclusion.